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On the eve of the 2014 season, Ohio State lost two-time Big Ten MVP Braxton Miller for the year with a shoulder injury. The news seemed devastating for a team that already had to replace four O-linemen and a 1,000-yard rusher. No matter, Buckeyes offensive coordinator/QB coach Tom Herman turned Miller's understudy, redshirt freshman J.T. Barrett, into a Heisman contender.
However, in OSU's regular-season finale, Barrett, too, was lost for the remainder of the year when he fractured his ankle against arch-rival Michigan. So the Buckeyes turned to third-stringer Cardale Jones, who promptly led OSU to a 59-0 romp over Wisconsin in the Big Ten Title game en route to a spot in the College Football Playoff. Then the strong-armed sophomore led the Buckeyes to the national title under Herman's guidance.
Along the way, Herman won the Broyles Award honoring the nation's top assistant coach. He also landed the University of Houston head coaching job and has been dubbed the "QB whisperer." A year earlier, Herman proved how adept he was at getting his backup QB ready. In 2013, his offense ranked third in the nation in scoring (45.5 points per game) while also having to rely on a second-team QB, Kenny Guiton (now a quality control assistant on Herman's UH staff.)
Not bad for a guy who was a small-college wideout and never played QB or coached it until 2005.
I've always been intrigued how guys who never played a position -- especially QB -- become so good at coaching it. Norm Chow played O-line at Utah. Mike Leach played rugby in college at BYU. Gus Malzahn was a receiver at Henderson State. When I visited Herman at UH a few weeks ago, I asked him how he made the transition to handling quarterbacks.
"I think I learned a lot from osmosis," he said. "I was at Texas State in 2005. I'd never coached quarterbacks and never called plays a day in my life. David Bailiff hired me and we go 11-3, and Barrick Nealy breaks all kinds of QB records. I grinded. I got my hands on every drill tape I could. I went to clinics. Every brain I could pick, I picked. And I wasn't too proud to ask the kids.
"I get to Rice and Chase Clement is there, and he's been playing quarterback a lot longer than I've been coaching it. He's probably had six different 'gurus' coaching him mechanically about this, that and the other. It's not having too much pride to drop the shield and say, 'Hey, you're missing high. Why do you think you're missing high?'
"'Well, coach, let's go back and look [and they'd watch his film together.] See, I'm probably over-striding right there. I'm locking my front leg out.'"
Herman says he'd chart that down, "and then the next kid that misses high, let me check out his front leg and see if he's locking it out."
In Herman's two years at Rice, the Owls set more than 40 school records.
"He's being modest," said Clement, who also praised Major Applewhite, now the UH OC, for aiding his technique while the former Texas star QB was on the Owls staff. "Tom knows a lot about football. He is a very smart coach. I learned a heckuva lot from him. He understands concepts very well.
"One thing he really did a great job [with] when he was running the offensive staff at Rice was he asked for a lot of input from his coaches and from his players, too. He was very open-minded. It was 'We got this concept. How can we tweak it?'"
Clement said he actually never did go to any private QB coaches when he was younger, but said he picked up a lot of tips from his days attending the Manning Passing Academy. In the year before Herman arrived at Rice, he threw for 1,700 yards and 21 TDs. In the two years with Herman, he threw for 73 TDs and almost 7,500 yards.
As for Herman, he credits long-time Mike Riley assistant Danny Langsdorf, the current Nebraska OC/QB coach, for sharing his insight with him.
"He was a young coach when I was playing at Cal Lutheran, and I knew [Langsdorf] well enough where I could really pick his brain after he spoke at a clinic at Oregon State on drills," Herman said. "I liked a lot of his drills. And I'll never forget he said, 'Always, always, always make your drills simulate what you're going to see in the game.'
"No offense to [QB guru] George [Whitfield], but you don't see brooms in the game. So, if a kid is having trouble flushing to his right, do everything you can the next week to simulate the scenario that caused him to have problems so you can get it right. Who cares about the cones and the bags? If it simulates to what the kid is feeling on a Saturday, then you've got a good drill."
Herman's latest project, Greg Ward, is optimistic his new coach -- and Applewhite -- can have as big an impact on his game as the old Cal Lutheran receiver had on his proteges up in Columbus.
Bruce Feldman is a senior college football reporter and columnist for FOXSports.com and FOX Sports 1. He is also a New York Times Bestselling author. His new book, The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks, came out in October 2014. Follow him on Twitter @BruceFeldmanCFB.
